The Quidditch World Cup Is This Weekend, Seriously

Ahem, I don’t know anything about Harry Potter (lies) and haven’t read the books (LIES), but I can certainly tell you that the sixth annual Quidditch World Cup will begin on Saturday, April 13, in Kissimmee, Fla.

Now, we can all go on pretending like we don’t know exactly what quidditch is, but for the four or five horribly bereft people out there, it’s an imaginary sport from the Harry Potter series that involves flying through the air on brooms and catching an assortment of different sentient and non-sentient balls.

It looks like this in the movies:

The muggle version going down at the Quidditch World Cup, on the other hand, will look more like this:

As league rules go, the matches are seven-on-seven, and all players on the field have to have a broom betwixt their legs at all time (chafe-city). The earth-bound version of the game is also played with a number of different, very un-enchanted items.

The muggle version of the quaffle is a “slightly deflated” volleyball, and the golden snitch is a human being—an “impartial” 15th player dressed all in gold who flees the pitch at the beginning of the game. The snitch has a golden sock with a tennis ball stuffed in it.

Yes, this is happening in real life, and no, you cannot stop it. What you can do is volunteer to set up the Quidditch World Cup (experience with quidditch is not required) or watch the international competition between teams on live stream: